Poots Pins of War Interview

Kingdom Death Interview: Adam Poots Talks Cooperative Gaming and Kickstarter Plans
November 8, 2012

Kingdom Death to go KickstarterKingdom Death is a boutique producers of some of the most fantastic miniatures I’ve ever seen. Most of their miniatures are limited runs, however. So far, Kingdom  Death also lacks a game to go with their awe-inspiring line of 35mm miniatures.  Kingdom Death recently announced that it would go to Kickstarter to raise funding for their game and miniatures. More than enough for me to send founder and creator Adam Poots some questions.

If you don’t know Kingdom Death yet, it is miniature games project being developed by Adam Poots. Here is what it says about the game on their website.

    Kingdom Death is a beautiful, original board game set in a nightmarish, richly imagined world, supported by some the most superbly sculpted miniatures on the planet. Spine-chilling storytelling, impossible battles, legendary adventures, horrifying monsters.

The Kingdom Death Game

Kingdom Death Preview

Though the game is still under development (and will launch through Kickstarter), Kingdom Death has released limited run miniatures for some time. I’ve written about both White Speaker Nico and more recently about Kingdom Death’s Gen-Con releases.

As awesome as the miniatures are, I am also intrigued by notion of a cooperative miniatures board game. It’s a concept you don’t see so often these days.

    Kingdom Death is a cooperative hybrid RPG / board game system, providing friends with countless adventures in dim, lantern-lit chaos and nightmares. Expect hordes of monsters and absurd boss battles to stand in the way of leveling and tricking out a perfect death machine build for your selected character.

Though beautiful, the miniatures are certainly hard to get in the UK (other than importing them directly from the US store). Nevertheless I subscribed to Kingdom Death’s Newsletter and followed them on Twitter and Facebook. When they announced plans for a Kingdom Death Kickstarter last month, I decided to mail the man behind the Kingdom Death some of my questions.

Kingdom Death: Interview with Adam Poots

Enough chatter. Here is the email-interview with Kingdom Death creator Adam Poots.
Kingdom Death Adam Poots

The man behind Kingdom Death

    Zweischneid: The Kingdom Death Game will be a “cooperative roleplaying game”. Can you spoil some details on how it will work?

    Adam Poots: The game I am kickstarting is indeed a cooperative roleplaying game, but the idea has evolved a lot since the initial plan. It got so big and ambitious that I’ve had to split it into two games!

    One game will focus on “hero” type characters that are very special and rare within the world. The other, the one that is being kickstarted, focuses more on the normal people of the world.

    I felt getting the players more involved from the bottom of the chain up would serve as an ideal introduction to the setting.

    The minimum amount of players is 1, but the game is being designed around 4 people playing together and I feel it could comfortably support 6 without too much modification to the rules. The game will use D10s and it’s really hard to say more without spoiling it. I really want as much as possible to be a surprise, I hope you understand.

    Zweischneid: Will you publish more background material for your miniatures? Can you spoil some details on your Kingdom Death fiction? Who are the main players? What is at stake?

    Adam Poots: The way the details of the world and the backgrounds of the monsters / characters are presented is very important to me.

    I do have plans for starting a short story section of the website. This would be similar to a webcomic that showcases small slices of the world and not so much one ongoing saga. The main conflict is human survival on a very individual basis. It’s a harsh and strange place, filled mostly with monsters where the various clusters of humans have only an extremely limited knowledge base.

    Zweischneid: Your Miniatures are some of the most intriguing (and often dark) sculpts out there. What miniatures can we look forward to for the Kickstarter? Existing sculpts? New sculpts? Boxed-sets or “faction”-sets of some sort? Large miniatures? Different materials?

    Adam Poots: Wow, well thank you! And now to answer the question… Mostly new miniatures.

    Depending on how much money can be raised, I’ll be able to include more of the older range and a lot of the planned expansions. I have a silly amount of content and I’d love to get it all into the box if it’s fiscally possible.

    The game isn’t a skirmish game, so there won’t be factions. For the boxed game the figures will be plastic and there certainly will be some new monsters. The newest thing in terms of the miniatures will be the introduction of interchangeable armor kits, so people can customize their character(s) to a much greater extent.

    Zweischneid: Can you say a bit more about how/from where you draw inspiration for your miniatures? Since your miniatures are really unique, I’d love to hear a bit more about it.

    Adam Poots: I try my best to stay original, but within a certain “familiarity zone”. I work on characters & creatures that I personally have always wanted to see and I think the type of horror I like is generally unexplored as miniature art.

    I feel that heroes shine the brightest in contrast to the “darkness” around them. I want the players to really feel uncomfortable and in danger while they play, so the world and creature / character designs needed to all support this desire.

    I really love religious depictions of gods, from all different cultures. I draw a lot of inspiration from that.

Many thanks once again to Adam for answering my questions. I am sure looking forward to the Kingdom Death Kickstarter campaign and will certainly write another post (or two) when the campaign is on its way.

What are your thoughts? Do you have urgent questions that you’d like to ask Adam? Are you looking forward to Kingdom Death on Kickstarter?

Leave a comment!

Z.